Seeds, Saville, and Deep
I was watering the hills where I planted pumpkin seeds a few days ago, when I noticed the faint, waning gibbous moon setting in the west.
#DigDeep
I was watering the hills where I planted pumpkin seeds a few days back, when I noticed the faint, waning, gibbous moon setting in the west. A thought came - had I planted the pumpkins at the right time of the moon? Waxing? Waning? A quick internet search and I found I had missed the optimal time by a couple of days. My father and his father before him, would have known this, intuitively.
🖤
And then, a catalogue of Jenny Saville’s Oxyrhynchus Exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in London arrived. The exhibition was in 2014. I procrastinated, and oddly enough, it took a pandemic to make me finally purchase it. Why I waited so long, I have no idea, because the artworks in this collection have moved me. They have opened me. I have spent hours studying the mark making, the brushstrokes, the color palette. The masterful layering of the different media brings a depth and reveals intimately the process of the artist. These works have changed my mind on what seeing can be. She named the exhibition after an Egyptian archaeological site, the ancient rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus. She said for her, it represented “culture in pieces - fragments captured in layers of time.”
🖤
This morning as I was drawing, I realized that the paper I was drawing on became exquisitely more interesting and beautiful the more I worked the graphite into it. As though, my purpose was to disturb the upper fibers to see what lay beneath. The time I spent with the drawing became an exploration of the specific materials, but more importantly, a look at my own tenaciousness. How often have I stopped working an artwork just because the fear of destroying it became greater than the desire to explore? And what might I have discovered if I had been just a little more curious?
Dig Deep is a catch phrase we often hear. But I think it truly is a wisdom. When you really think about it, there is always something more to know. Something more to learn. A new way to see and to understand. So why not dig a little deeper. Take another chance. Stay ever so curious.
🖤
(Note: As of this writing, four pumpkin seedlings have started pushing their way out of the ground.)
Birthing
She said, “The ground is birthing.” I was struck by her choice of words.
Crabapple blossoms
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
She said, “The ground is birthing.” I was struck by her choice of words. It seemed an odd descriptor, and yet, as I looked about, I could see that it was true.
The high mountain desert is waking up. Everywhere new life is coming into being and growing at staggering rates. The clematis by the porch, grows several inches every night, as if in a race with itself.
Dormant grasses green. Verbena blossoms purple, in every ditch and wayside. Trees reawaken vigorous. Aspens and crabapples leaf out, blossoming and filling the air with a scent that lures all manner of flying creatures.
Insects varied, and small burrowing animals, crawl from what just days ago were empty holes. The walking black beetles are back and hurried. They understand time. Lizards laze underfoot soaking up the ever warming sun. While snakes venture out with a new hunger. A family of squirrels, who wintered in a burrow under a Cholla cactus, scatter about. The babies rushing to explore every inch of their great new world, while the mama watches for dangers, like hawks and humans. Rabbits pair up and jump in a dance of anticipation and lust.
Everything is fully alive. Everything is terribly awake. Am I? Is it not my Spring, as well? Should I not be as alert to the things around me as any other creature? Can we rebirth on occasion? I think so. After all, I am hardly who I once was. Every season brings changes of one sort or another. So, let me join this frenzy of life while it is here. Let me celebrate this verdant new season, with its warm days and cool nights. For way too soon the summer’s heat will drive us all back to the shadows. But then again, we will have the gentler summer nights and the sharp summer stars. So very many stars. We are tasked to live this life by the nature of our birth. And this season like every season is simply a reminder.
The Draw of Morning
It started with a need or maybe a want. It's so hard to tell them apart sometimes.
#DRAW
It started with a need or maybe a want. It's so hard to tell them apart sometimes. I wanted drawings vastly ripe with intention. I wanted words I could cling to and wallow in, like dark mud. I needed the pencil to know it’s way across the paper like an afterthought. Gorged on memory and pretense. Needing to exist as much as I. All this, while the truth sat patiently waiting to be discovered. For it’s all just marks on paper. Isn’t it?
Still, I cherish this time when the sun and I rise together. We begin anew like it’s the first day for each of us. The same bravado. Even though we know better, we never let on. With age comes a stronger belief in the immortal and the unbroken continuousness of creation. And somewhere in the midst of all that, I have no doubt, there is a direct line to the soul.
Growing Times
I had to cover some newly sprouted plants over the last two nights. The temperatures dropped drastically.
“I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring ”
I had to cover some newly sprouted plants over the last two nights. The temperatures dropped drastically. I shouldn't be surprised. Every Spring it happens this way. It takes so little for the cold to return. A shift in the air this way or that, and everything is revealed. So much is lived at the edge, after all. Conditions must be just so for growth, I suppose. But is that true? What machinations occur while we wait? Are nightly dreams merely a hint of the coming day?
We know truths. They lie far back in our brain and our gut, like some vestigial tail, waiting to be recalled. And when times are strained, I think we get glimpses. I think we know. It becomes all too evident that there is so much more. We are so much more. But it's easy to forget the cold in a heat wave. And memory often becomes short sighted. What once was so important quickly dims in the shine of a different day. The real trick is to remember when things change. And they will.
Today I hung a new strand of brightly colored prayer flags to overlap the old faded ones from the last season. It's a tradition to remind us of impermanence. The spring winds quickly intertwined them indiscriminately.
Wrap My Head Round It
I woke with a dread. Needed to make a grocery run.
#StayHome (This painting no longer exists)
I woke with a dread. Needed to make a grocery run. I pulled the neck gator up over my nose and mouth, and took a quick glance in the mirror. I looked like a bandit, like an unknown thief. But it did coincide nicely with the way I felt. Like something had been stolen. Like something was missing. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on. You know, something nameless. Then again, maybe it was just the lack of normalcy. That place just this side of nervous humor that seems to turn into fear fifteen times a day. Yeah, that place. They say it will still exist when this is all over. It will still be there. I suppose they're right. But my phone just sounded an alert. The “Stay At Home” health order has been extended until the end of the month.
I still look like a bandit.
Run, Paint, Repeat
It had been windy for days. It was irritating. The wind chimes on the porch were playing an awkward tinny tune that was also irritating.
It had been windy for days. It was irritating. The wind chimes on the porch were playing an awkward tinny tune that was also irritating. And the man talking on the TV was especially irritating, as much so, as the empty shelves at the grocery store.
So, there was only one thing to do. RUN. The more irritated I was, the faster I ran. And it worked. I could outrun the irritations. And suddenly I was running almost everyday. But I couldn't run all the time. However, I could paint.
I didn’t paint in my normal way, though. I started to finger paint. Of course I wore gloves, but I painted fast, aggressively, and was making marks I could never make with the brush. It was exciting. It was helpful. It helped as much as the running.
One day this staying at home and social distancing will be over, but we will be changed. Maybe we will be changed for the better. Perhaps what we choose to do now will help us on the other side of this crisis. Find what helps you cope. I hope you find your version of running and finger painting. Stay safe.
Morning Light
As I walked to the studio this morning, it was cold, bone chilling actually. But I noticed the light.
Studio door in morning light
“Sometimes in the dark I find myself
in a place that I seem to have known
in another time
and I wonder
whether it has changed through
sunrises and sunsets that I never saw”
As I walked to the studio this morning, it was cold, bone chilling actually. But I noticed the light. (I always seem to notice light.) It was very subdued. Almost as if the sun was hesitant to disturb the thin clouds. Still there were shadows. Very open shadows.
It was a peaceful light, calming. Although, I can recall days in this desert, when the light was so sharp and aggressive, it was hard to look upon. Those are the times I feel like an intruder on a land that has no need for me. But this morning, it beckons me with its gentle, cold shadows. And I will gladly take what is offered.
Snow and Drawings
This Winter has been a snowy one. And that’s a good thing. The desert
Snow day
“That I’m looking for something I can’t find
makes me strangely satisfied.
It fills me with time.”
This Winter has been a snowy one. And that’s a good thing by most standards, especially here in the desert. The desert always thirsts. But I must admit the gray days are starting to take their toll on my psyche. We typically have a lot of sunshine all year long. Still, one should try and make good use of days like these.
So, I’m in the studio today going through piles of drawings and sketchbooks filled with still more drawings. Sometimes I forget just how much work I have produced over the years. Seeing some of these drawings is like seeing old friends again. Some, I remember every mark, while others, I barely recall drawing them at all.
A creative life is about marking time. We leave our marks all along the way. And looking back to where we have been is a good thing, on occasion, but for now, I need to draw.